Delivering accurate average speeds data

“Highways Analyst data has proven to be extremely valuable across the council, delivering robust and accurate analysis to a wide range of colleagues working on diverse projects”

Phillippa White, Design Engineer, Kingston Borough Council

Kingston Borough Council have been using Highways Analyst to process and utilise Trafficmaster data to develop transport schemes for a number of internal departments.

Phillippa White, Design Engineer at the Council, has been supplying data extracted from Highways Analyst to the Councils Sustainable Transport, Strategy and Commissioning, Design and Delivery and Go Cycle teams to feed into important transport projects they have been working on. Highways Analyst is an effective software solution for quickly analysing Trafficmaster data.

Highways Analyst map showing average speed in Kingston in the morning peak

Highways Analyst map showing average speed in Kingston in the morning peak

Highways Analyst can be used with Traffcmaster data to look at bi-directional routes and historical data, broken down into 15 minute segments. As Phillippa is responsible for providing data for engineers within 4 teams it has been important to her that queries can be run quickly. “If we are looking at a single junction the query only takes a matter of minutes and even on longer, more detailed pieces of work, the query runs are relatively quick to complete.”

The data coverage must also be good and results accurate and Phillippa notes that HA “provides the right information, the journey times are very useful to have and provide a valuable snapshot.”

Before using HA, the council were reliant on getting data from 65 permanent Automatic Traffic Counter (ATC) locations and ad hoc temporary ATC locations which resulted in many gaps in the network coverage. The data from HA has now filled in these gaps and feedback internally has expressed the need to continue using HA long term. In terms of accuracy, Phillipa notes that the HA results she has been getting have been very good, “I’m really impressed at how much the HA data correlates with the data I have from my permanent sites, giving me great confidence in the results. Using HA allows me to easily narrow down and fine tune data to compare with my permanent data.”

Phillippa can see an increased use of HA in the council going forward, as the engineers who have discovered how good the data is are now asking for it more regularly. “The data from HA has given the engineers more wealth of information and detailing, enriching their projects and work, so we can see the demand for this data will only increase.We anticipate relying more heavily on Highways Analyst going forward as it provides us with a more robust and comprehensive future outlook for vehicle speeds across our borough”, she concluded.